


slithered here from eden just to sit outside your door

by candypoppin



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, F/F, Lovecraftian Monster(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:54:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22679062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candypoppin/pseuds/candypoppin
Summary: In which Chaeyoung is a counsellor and Tzuyu is... well... whatever she is, she's definitely not human.
Relationships: Chou Tzuyu/Son Chaeyoung, More to come
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37





	1. in which chaeyoung has two (2) weird encounters in one day

**Author's Note:**

> first up, i'm sorry
> 
> second, all will be revealed in due time
> 
> thirdly, if you have any theories or whatever, please DM me or scream about it on my TL!! i'm always looking for inspiration
> 
> @candypoppin on twitter

The door creaked as Chaeyoung snapped her head back up and met her colleague’s amused eyes in the mirror. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Yeri ran her hands under the water for a second, skipped the hand soap (it was running out), and nudged Chaeyoung with her hip. "Heads up - they found another one in Section Eight. Park’s handed it over to you.”

Chaeyoung sighed. “I’ll get to it.” She tied her hair back up, adjusted her jacket, and stepped out of the door into the cramped confines of the corridor outside, tapping her chest instinctively to make sure that her ID was still there. From there, it was a short hop and a skip back out into the maze of cubicles that was the Bureau of Processing.

 _Hi, I’m Chaeyoung, and I’m your designated Processor_ , she thought to herself, mouthing the words, as the stairs flashed by under her feet, two at a time. _Can you speak Korean? Can you speak Chinese? Can you speak Japanese?_ She repeated the first sentence in each of the three languages, and then tried a few tongue-twisters to get the pronunciation right.

The Bureau of Processing was surprisingly small and underfunded given its massive workload. Chaeyoung knew that was a common complaint among all bureaucrats, but it was true for her. More than that, the job was emotionally taxing. Sure, she could've made like her older colleagues and gone completely sociopathic, but the thought of doing so didn't sit right with her.

As she buzzed in past the swinging doors, a wall of noise hit her like a sledgehammer to the face. That was just how it was in Briefing Area Thirteen - a constant, unending barrage of screaming, every hour of every day. As a pair of orderlies stumbled past, wrestling a hulking man into a bed and struggling to buckle its leather straps about his bulging muscles, Chaeyoung put on her game face, stuffed her earbuds in, and took a deep breath to warm up her vocal chords.

"Hey," Seungwan shouted, tapping her on the shoulder, "your case is at the very end! I had to move her because she was making the others uncomfortable!" A scrap of paper was stuffed into her hand; Chaeyoung glanced at it and nodded. As she made her way down, past the rows and rows of beds with people strapped to them, hissing and spitting, she checked off the figures scrawled on their headboards and compared them with the string of numbers in her hand.

_492819, 492819… ah._

Chaeyoung knew that it was unprofessional of her, but she couldn't help but think that the girl sitting on the side of the bed was beautiful.

And yet… and yet. Something wasn't right.

All the beds surrounding her case were empty, and she wasn't screaming. She wasn't even moving. Was she breathing? Come to think of it… why did she look so… so normal? The vast majority of cases were (though it was impolite of her to think that) misshapen, twisted things, with extra eyes and extra limbs. Why was this girl so… normal? The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

_Fuck it. Just do your job._

"Hi, I'm Chaeyoung, and I'm your designated Processor," she began, in Korean, and froze as the girl's eyes snapped up to meet hers.

How could she describe those eyes? They were empty, and completely devoid of emotion. More than that, they were _wrong_. Staring into those twin voids of black put Chaeyoung in mind of the vastness of space, of a massive ocean of shadows, of a choking, cramped forest swamped in ice and populated by naught but starved beasts desperate for flesh -

"Excuse me," said someone behind her, coldly, "that's my sister you're talking to, and she's not a half-wit. She can speak Korean just fine."

Chaeyoung spun around, feeling as though she was pulling herself back out of a deep, dark hole, and found that Briefing Area Thirteen had gone as silent as the grave. It wasn't because all the cases had been wrestled out - though some of them had - but because all of them - and Chaeyoung knew that Briefing Area Thirteen could accommodate almost three hundred cases simultaneously - had suddenly clamped their mouths shut.

There were two women standing in front of her. One of them was shorter, with large eyes, and clad in the crimson garb of the Bloodlands. The other one had a narrower face and a somewhat slimmer figure; her brown brooch signified that she belonged to the upper ranks of Brownfield society. Physically, they weren't very imposing, but something about them was unsettling. Something about them made Chaeyoung's skin crawl.

But she had a job to do.

"Do you have any documents proving that this person is your sister?"

The shorter woman drew in a breath, eyes sparking dangerously, but her taller companion put a hand on her arm and spoke instead. "We've spoken to your superior," she said, smoothly. "The matter has already been resolved. Would you like to take it up with him?"

Chaeyoung set her jaw and opened her mouth, only to see the doors to Briefing Area Thirteen fly open. In Mr Park came, arms swinging, his face frozen in an expression of sheepish regret. "So, so sorry for the trouble, Ms Park, Ms Myoui," he was simpering. "My subordinate will apologize. Won't you, Ms Son?"

"Of course," Chaeyoung gritted out. "My apologies."

Ms Myoui - the one from the Brownfields, judging from how Mr Park's eyes had shifted to her as he'd said that name - smiled absently. "Of course." Brushing past them both, she put an arm around Case #492819's shoulders and guided her to her feet.

As the doors to Briefing Area Thirteen swung shut behind them, one of the cases let out a high, keening wail and started to claw at his eyes.

\-----

( _She is in her home, in her element. The chase is all around her. The chase is all there is._ )

Carefully, the two women manoeuvred their "sister" into the car idling outside the Bureau of Processing. Once she had been shifted into a sitting position, the shorter woman - whose name was Jihyo - rapped on the translucent screen shielding the driver from view. Immediately, the engine flared into life.

"We came as soon as we knew," Jihyo said to her "sister". Outside the window, Seoul swept by. "Wait, can you even talk?"

( _She is in the forest. The forest is black and cold. The forest takes its nourishment from the warm blood of the living. The forest is alive. The forest is hungry. She is the forest._ )

"Check her brain," Mina said.

Jihyo reached for her "sister's" head. As her fingers came into contact with her temple, the flesh parted like water, exposing a pale, wobbling jelly. "Oh, I see it… but there's no problem. None whatsoever." Turning around, she blinked at Mina. "You weren't like this when you emerged."

"Maybe she's just settling in."

“Maybe,” echoed Jihyo dubiously, and pulled her fingers back with a sucking sound, the flesh closing cleanly, leaving nary a scar.

( _Now she is hunting. Hunting is what she does. Her subjects call it “patrolling”. They think she is keeping them safe. They should keep thinking that. It is easier to keep them under control that way. In the same way that a sheepdog guards its sheep, so too does she guard her subjects._ )

“Do you understand us?” Jihyo said, slowly and loudly.

( _She is pulling away. She is in the forest, and she is the forest, and she is a vast, black-winged vulture cruising through the skies, a dead rabbit in her claws, blood drip-drip-dripping out over the black branches grasping towards the sky._ )

As Jihyo repeated herself for the tenth time, Mina turned her face to the window and stared up at the vast, towering mansion to her right. They’d arrived.

Jihyo, Mina and their two “sisters” lived on the outskirts of Seoul. Their plot of land had been discreetly acquired from the municipal government a few years back at a pittance; the whole area had been fenced off, and no construction crews had been allowed in. The vagrants that regularly traversed this patch of semi-lawless territory knew not to venture nearby - Sana had made an example of two of them.

The screaming lasted for weeks.

Mina opened the door and waited for Jihyo to manoeuvre their "sister" into a standing position before slamming it shut and knocking on the window. Slowly, the car pulled away and retreated into the driveway.

"Oh, I think she's walking on her own."

"You haven't yet had to support her full weight, have you? If not, then I think she's already been walking in some capacity since she emerged."

( _The vulture that is her-yet-not is above a peninsula. There is a vast, teeming city in the centre of this peninsula, close to the western coast. The city is called Seoul. She does not want to limit herself, to cut this piece of herself off from the greater whole, to isolate this segment, this branch, this offshoot -_ )

The doors slid open for them.

Inside, the mansion was fairly conventional. Jihyo had copied the interior design off of a bunch of old lifestyle magazines and stocked it with a few pilfered artworks. They left their "sister" on the couch and went to get a drink.

( _The vessel exists. All that remains is to take that final step. There is hesitation._ )

( _The hesitation is ruthlessly crushed. The vestige is isolated, its connection shaved down to almost nothing, and crammed down into the mess of neurons that is the brain of a girl sitting on a couch in a mansion on the outskirts of Seoul -_ )

The girl gasped.

_Sister, you are awake!_

Jihyo's mouth did not move. Neither did Mina's. But the girl could see them, nonetheless, and hear them.

 _A significant portion of your brain yet exists in a non-material form_ , Jihyo said approvingly. _Nice work. Very nice work._

 _I will call the other two_ , Mina said.

\-----

The sun - huge and crimson, a grotesquely overgrown parody of its former self - had sunk below the horizon when Chaeyoung finally knocked off work.

Mr Park had told her - no, _ordered_ her, and if there was one thing Chaeyoung didn’t take to, it was being ordered around - to all but forget about what had happened this afternoon in Briefing Area Thirteen, but that sort of thing wasn’t something that one just buried under the rug. Literally no Briefing Area had ever gone silent before, and it was pretty obvious that Ms Park and Ms Myoui weren’t authorized personnel. They shouldn’t have been allowed in; heck, when the Bureau had been opened, the Mayor had had to fill up five forms to gain entrance! (He’d made a big deal out of it in his re-election campaign - “oh, I’m a man of the people, the rules apply to me, blah blah blah”.) Besides, how high-up could they be? And that girl…

Okay, Chaeyoung couldn’t lie to herself. She _did_ want to see her again, but it was more a matter of curiosity than anything else. _Professional_ curiosity.

Anyways, being ordered around - it didn’t sit well with her. But what could she do? She was just one person.

And yet…

_I have their names._

There was always that.

As Chaeyoung filed into the overcrowded train carriage, pushed along by what felt like the entire population of Seoul, she recited their names in her head. _Ms Park. Ms Myoui_. Well, Park was a common enough surname, but Myoui? There was a start.

As the lights of the ill-maintained tunnels passed over her face, Chaeyoung stared at herself in the reflective glass of the carriage. She couldn’t help but think that she was on the verge of taking the first step down a very dangerous path.

 _And perhaps I am_ -

There was someone behind her.

Chaeyoung had only caught the barest glimpse of his face - its face? - before the lights went out. As gasps, cries, and more than a few muffled sobs erupted around her, her mind focused on that split-second memory, but only managed to recall a skeletal face, a fuzzy silhouette, and what looked like one hand reaching for her shoulder. As the train carriage struggled not to break down into utter panic ( _panic just makes it worse_ ), Chaeyoung’s nostrils were filled with the thick stench of leather as someone’s briefcase glanced off the bridge of her nose. They were packed like sardines in the train, stuffed against the walls, and the - and the train had stopped.

_Shit. Shit, it’s Them._

They were Nightlanders. They had to be.

_No sudden noises. Don’t be afraid. They can smell it._

Before Chaeyoung could even begin to steel herself, they arrived.

There were a few muffled gasps, abruptly and suddenly cut off. Chaeyoung squeezed her eyes shut - it made no difference, anyway. When Nightlanders were nearby, all light was extinguished - consumed, some said. The cold - where was the cold coming from? It was coming from her left. Her left. Yes. She had to be certain about that, if nothing else. She still had a body, didn’t she? Carefully, Chaeyoung took a deep breath - forcing the flinch down as the cold air filled her nose, followed closely by the smell of pines and other, less pleasant scents - and deliberately loosened her posture.

Oh, right. The smell of leather had left her nose. That meant… Chaeyoung didn’t want to think about what that meant.

And then a cold hand wrapped around her wrist.

Chaeyoung bit down so hard on her lip that she tasted blood. The hand - how many fingers did it have? - danced up and down her arm, leaving little pinpricks of frost as it went, leeching every last bit of warmth out of it. _I’ll need to get a new jacket_ , she thought, half-hysterically, and a soft sound escaped her lips, which had parted just a fraction.

The hand stopped.

Chaeyoung held her breath.

The hand danced up to her shoulder, alighted briefly on her neck, and caressed her jaw.

Then it let go.

An interminable amount of time later, the terrified, staccato breathing of the surrounding commuters finally registered in the depths of her lizard brain, followed shortly after by the resumption of the jittery electric hum of the train carriage. There were more than a few loud sighs of relief; slowly, carefully, Chaeyoung opened her eyes and took stock. Her jacket was fine - it had worn thin in some places - so it must have just been her imagination. Exchanging glances with the strangers around her - funny how near-death experiences tend to bring people together - she patted her shoulders, ran her fingers over her neck, and pressed gently against her jaw. No damage; it didn’t even feel like there’d been bruising. Great! _It probably happens to everyone_ , she thought, sagging slightly, and reached for her bag.

It was unzipped.

_Oh, no._

As the doors opened and disgorged a flood of passengers, Chaeyoung was left standing a little to the side, leaning against the metal railings lining the carriage, staring into her bag, staring at the spot where her ID card was supposed to be.

\-----

They had named her Tzuyu.

Chou Tzuyu.

Tzuyu - that was her name, now - rolled the words around in her mouth. “Chou Tzuyu,” she said, unfamiliar with the concept of teeth and tongue and mandible and maxilla collaborating together to produce sounds that weren’t hunting calls or howls of victory or shrieks of rage. “Chou Tzuyu, Chou Tzuyu, Chou Tzuyu.”

The lawn - green, pristine, thousands of neatly-trimmed blades of grass - stretched out before her. “We left that untouched,” Mina had said, before leaving for dinner with her three sisters. “For you to despoil in your own time.”

For that, Tzuyu was grateful.

Slowly, gradually, the grass started to blacken and curl in on itself. Frost started to appear, spreading in great inky blots across the lawn. Here, now, at dusk, it seemed as though night had fallen over the lawn early. She raised her arms as the blackness solidified and gained form.

One by one, figures of pure shadow - an absence of light made flesh - rose out of the lawn, stalking towards her, all jagged edges and pitted carapaces. One by one, they halved in height, what passed for heads inclining in respectful adoration. One of them - the creature closest to her - extended one many-fingered claw and presented her with a gift.

“Chou Tzuyu,” Tzuyu whispered, wrapping her opposable thumb (what an interesting concept!) around the gift. Her eyes - black as the darkest night - examined the small plastic card, turning it over and over again in her hand. “My name is Chou Tzuyu.”

“Your name is Son Chaeyoung.”

\-----

**CIA WORLD FACTBOOK**

**Published and Produced by the Central Intelligence Agency of the Emergency Government of the United States of America**

**[THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION]**

_Last Update 1/1/2053_

**Pg. 34**

_EAST ASIAN COMPACT_

_Occupies:_ Coastal and Northeast China, Korean peninsula, Japanese archipelago

 _Description:_ The East Asian Compact (named by Dr. Miles Kaufman [1984-2045]) is an association of five deocratic states located in the eponymous region. The Compact is characterized by a general adherence to pre-Incursion methods of governance and production, as well as a largely pacifistic and isolationist foreign policy.

The states are as follows:

  * _The Churning_ , occupying the former Chinese provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning as well as the Municipalities of Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, with minor holdings along the western coast of Korea and miscellaneous islands
  * _Bright Kingdom,_ occupying southern Korea and western Kyushu, with minor holdings in western Honshu and along the eastern coast of Korea
  * _The Bloodlands,_ occupying northern Korea and Manchuria
  * _The Brownfields,_ occupying the majority of the former State of Japan, with minor holdings in southern Korea
  * _The Nightlands,_ occupying the territory of the Republic of China, the former Chinese provinces of Hainan, Guangdong and Fujian, the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau and southern Kyushu, with minor holdings in southern Korea



(All territorial descriptions are speculative and roughly approximate owing to the unavailability of sufficiently accurate satellite technology as well as the unwillingness of the members of the EAC to divulge their territorial holdings.)

The Compact was established during the late Incursions, following the establishment of the Eastern Alliance and the extermination of all MTEs within its borders. Following the decapitation of the Eastern government in the Decimation of Tokyo, it is theorized that the Compact formed a temporary non-aggression pact with FTEs from Tibet and Uyghurstan to establish a buffer state in central China, subsequently withdrawing to the coastline.

The Compact continues to engage in industrial agriculture and produces consumer goods on a significant (if diminished) scale. It produces a significant surplus and has supported the development of a northern Pacific trade route with its nexus in Honolulu, Hawaii. It is, therefore, a non-negligible trade partner of the United States, and supplies approximately a tenth of our pre-rationing food supplies. […]


	2. ipod

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @candypoppin on twitter

_BEEP_

Chaeyoung stepped up to the gantry, tapped her card against the cool, smooth pad and waited.

_FIVE THOUSAND WON_

_THANK YOU FOR TRAVELING WITH US_

“Not like I have a choice,” Chaeyoung grumbled, under her breath, and then stepped through the gantry, ran up the stairs and emerged into the crowded street just outside her home. The street lights blazed above her head, so bright that she could see them even through her eyelids, and Chaeyoung nudged her way past a woman bargaining frantically for an extra pound of meat before lunging out of the fray and pausing to catch her breath.

The alley in which she stood was somewhat less brightly-lit, but it didn’t matter. No matter how brightly Seoul illuminated its roadways and tunnels, it would always fall short. Hundreds - probably thousands, since the government always liked to lowball its statistics - were taken by the Nightlanders on a yearly basis, and Chaeyoung held on to that fact as she strode briskly up to her apartment block and made her way into the lobby.

 _They like to take souvenirs_ , she thought, heart still pounding in her chest, the encounter still fresh in her head. _Just be thankful that you weren’t taken, okay? Just be thankful._

That still left her with a sizable problem, though. How was she going to explain this to Mr Park? He was probably itching for a chance to fire her, and this would be the perfect opportunity for him. “Oh, she’s careless and doesn’t know to watch her mouth,” she muttered, mimicking his simpering tone. “I’d strongly suggest that she be let go.”

Let go? Not a chance. Her family was barely keeping their heads above water as it was, and Chaeyoung’s salary meant that they could at least afford to send Jeonghoon to school. If that dried up…

Still, there was no way that she could just fabricate an ID card out of nowhere. It was impossible. More to the point, it required skills that she simply did not have, such as the ability to sneak into one of the government’s ID-card-making plants, snagging an ID card, leaving unnoticed, and then editing it to work exactly like her previous ID card.

_I should track down a Nightlander myself and demand my ID card back._

The thought was so audacious, so ridiculous, that a harsh, quick guffaw erupted from Chaeyoung’s lips, echoing off the walls of the elevator, and dwindled into silence before the doors slid open and Chaeyoung exited onto her floor. Her key turned in the lock, she kicked off her shoes, and - just like that - she was home.

“I’m home!”

Jeonghoon made a noise that sounded like his mouth was full, their mother hollered indistinctly from the kitchen, and Chaeyoung stumped off to her room.

Technically, she shared it with Jeonghoon, but he spent most of his time in the living room studying, anyway, so it didn’t really matter. It was a cozy space, with most of her stuff spilling over the invisible line separating her half of the room from her younger brother’s half, and Chaeyoung dumped her bag on the floor before falling forwards into the mattress and sighing into the sheets.

She stayed there, for a while, switching between contemplating her impending retrenchment and obsessively recounting the details of her encounter with the Nightlanders, before her mother yelled at her to bathe.

\-----

“How was your day?”

“Good,” Tzuyu said.

Distantly, she was aware that there was a small fire brewing in the kitchen. Her nose twitched; the air smelled strongly of ozone.

Jihyo peered at her. “Good?”

Tzuyu nodded.

There was a peal of thunder, and then a loud, violent clattering noise. “Can either of you _please_ give me a hand?” Nayeon screamed.

Mina sighed, rose to her feet, and glided into the kitchen, leaving Jihyo to continue squinting at Tzuyu, eyes flicking from her placid, blank stare to her muddy feet, and below, to the hitherto pristine carpet on which her feet were resting.

“Next time,” Jihyo said, slowly, dragging her words out as though she was speaking to a calf or a colt or a cub, “can you try not to track mud into the house? This is to ensure that this space remains clean.”

Tzuyu nodded.

“Do you know what ‘clean’ means?”

Tzuyu shook her head.

Jihyo pursed her lips. “Okay,” she began, again, with an air of studied patience, and then seemed to abruptly discard that line of thought as her eyes sharpened. “Is that something in your hand?”

Tzuyu nodded. Jihyo raised an eyebrow, and so Tzuyu opened her hand.

“Why do you have some girl’s ID card?” Jihyo plucked it from Tzuyu’s hand - Tzuyu made a small noise of annoyance - and examined it. “Isn’t this the girl who argued with us? Mina?”

Mina appeared at Jihyo’s shoulder and nodded.

“Why’d you take it?”

Tzuyu shrugged.

\-----

Later, late at night, Chaeyoung shifted, twisting her body against the mattress in such a way that she ended up lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, and pulled out her most prized possession.

It was a cracked and chipped device, but it still worked. There was a round symbol on its back, roughly resembling an apple, and below that was a single word: “iPod”. It had been passed down to her from her grandmother, before she’d passed away, and represented - to Chaeyoung, at least - nothing more and nothing less than a complete history of the world as it had been before… before this.

There were two small bud-like protrusions, linked to the machine by stained wires - “earbuds” - and she slid them into her ears before switching on the iPod. Immediately, she heard her grandmother’s voice again, as though she was still alive, and Chaeyoung bit her lip. Jeonghoon was a light sleeper, after all, and if he was awoken by his sister’s crying, it’d raise more questions than she could answer.

_I was thirteen when the Incursions began._

_We don’t have a name for the Incursions anymore, not in Seoul, but that was what the West called it, and so that was what we called it, before the chaos ended and it became forbidden to talk about it in public._

_I was thirteen, and I was on Twitter when it started. I knew that something had gone wrong, because there were crazy stories coming in from every direction - from Africa, from Europe, from Australia, from China, from America. The sky had changed colour in some parts of the world. The sun and moon weren’t in the right places. The stars were wrong… or were they right?_

Her grandmother chuckled, hoarsely, before breaking off into a bout of coughing, and Chaeyoung bit down, harder, until she tasted blood.

_Sorry, my dear. It’s just a little reference to a book I read once. Maybe I’ll tell you about it some other time._

Chaeyoung pressed a button, and her grandmother fell silent. Lifting the device to her tired eyes, she navigated her way to another “file” - which was what her grandmother called them, these little glowing rows, each with their own names - and pressed another button.

_Never forget that these countries exist, my dear, for although you may live and die in Seoul, there are other parts of the world that do not live under the yoke of… these things._

_But I doubt it._

Her grandmother sighed.

_Still, that’s the point of these stories - to tell them to you as I remember it, as they were, in turn, told to me. To keep the memory alive. To remember how the world was before they came._

_Where was I?_

A pause.

_Ah, yes. Egypt._

Chaeyoung closed her eyes and thought of her second-most prized possession, a small scrap of paper on which her grandmother had drawn. She’d marked out the various countries painstakingly, one by one, and put down a little star over Seoul. Chaeyoung remembered being amazed at the sheer size of it.

_When the Incursions began, Egypt suffered a lot. It had been under the rule of a dictator, a very bad man who wanted to control everything - much like our very own President, but don’t tell anyone I said that - and it was, at the same time, a very, very old country. So, the things that came back were old. Very old._

_I remember a video that one of my friends sent me on Twitter. He said it had been taken in Cairo. There was a big, green column - you know, like the skyscrapers - and it was waving, back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger. And he told me that it was made of flesh, like the Bloodlands, and when people touched it, they turned transparent, and their faces changed, and they looked all different. My friend, he was from Thailand - I’ll tell you more about Thailand in a while - and he said that this thing was probably called Osiris._

_I don’t know much more about what happened in Egypt. Before the Internet was shut off, the only other bit of information I heard about Egypt was that there were big beetles coming out of the ground there, and that people who died there didn’t stay dead._

_I don’t know if Osiris won in the end, because the old things came back here, in Korea, and they lost to the new things, but -_

Her grandmother fell silent. Chaeyoung sat up, as quietly as she dared, eyes staring blindly into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything, but she could feel something. More specifically, she felt cold.

 _I’ve basically already lost my job_ , she thought, with sudden clarity, _and if there’s a Nightlander in my room, I’m most likely dead anyway. And my family is, too. What else do I have to lose?_

“Hey,” she whispered, noticing how Jeonghoon’s snores had disappeared. “Are you here to kill me?”

Silence.

"If you are," Chaeyoung whispered, voice quivering just the tiniest bit, "take me. Don't take my family. I don't know what I've done to piss you off, but they're blameless. Leave them alone. Take me instead."

Silence.

“And on the off chance that you’re not here to kill me, I’d at least appreciate my ID card back.”

Silence.

Then, abruptly, a tiny strip of plastic exploded out from the all-consuming darkness and hit Chaeyoung on the nose.

\-----

**OXFORD DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL ENGLISH**

**PUBLISHED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH**

**Pg. 394**

_deocracy_ \- noun

Etymology: deo- (Latin _deus_ , “god”) + -cracy (Ancient Greek _-kratía_ , “rule”)

Pronunciation: /deː(j)okɹəsi/

Definition: A polity operated and dominated by a theopotent entity. Distinct from a _theocracy_ , which describes a polity operated and dominated by human-led organizations presuming to conduct their affairs under the direction of a theopotent entity.


	3. chaeyoung takes a fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @candypoppin on twitter

The River had once had a name.

Chaeyoung knew this, because her grandmother had said so. It had once been called the Han River, and there had been many, many other rivers just like it. Now, though, there was only one river, and as for what had happened to the rest… well, not even her grandmother had known _that_.

The River had once been multi-coloured, according to her grandmother. It had once been iridescent, blue-green when clean, muddy brown when dirty, and yellowish, too, on occasion, when another kind of dirt was present in the water. Sometimes, it was transparent. It had once provided water for over twelve million Koreans, and Chaeyoung’s mind strained to comprehend a number of that scale.

These days, the River flowed red.

It was always red, regardless of the amount of dirt present in its waters, and the water - if it could even be called water - was soupy and thick, and tended to coagulate quickly. Strange things moved in the current, concealed from view by the filmy, oily liquid, and would strike as and when they wished, dragging innocent bystanders under as they screamed and pleaded and begged for their lives. The banks of the River had been cordoned off, with great, grey walls erected on both sides at considerable cost.

But the disappearances had continued.

The River was ravenous, and as the walls had gone up, so too had the River. It burst its banks when Chaeyoung’s mother was still a blushing schoolgirl, and the strange things that had once been concealed by its foul-smelling, crimson juices crawled out onto the deserted banks, gibbering, moaning, grunting. Slowly, one by one, they had grown wings. And, one by one, they had taken to the air.

And so the disappearances had continued.

\-----

Her mother gasped when Chaeyoung sat down for breakfast.

“What happened to you?” she demanded, hands raised as though unsure of where to put them, and settled for patting her on the hand in agitation. “You look like you haven’t slept at all! How are you going to go to work in such a state?”

“I’ll be fine,” Chaeyoung grunted, forcing down a searing cup of water, and began to nibble at her food. As her father and Jeonghoon sat down to eat, she tuned them all out and focused on the dry, crunchy texture of her bread; she was in no mood to talk, and especially after what had happened last night, she wasn’t sure what she’d say if pressed.

She’d stayed up all night, hyperventilating, waiting for whatever lurked in the darkness to lash out, whisking her away… or, even worse, whisking Jeonghoon away. And yet nothing had wrapped its cold fingers around her ankle, tugging gently, pulling her into an abyss, and Chaeyoung waited until her and Jeonghoon’s shared alarm clock rang before uncurling her stiff body and going to splash some water on her face. A shock had run through her body as she opened the door; perhaps she’d half-expected to step into some empty, yawning void. In any case, no such void had appeared, and her usual rituals had gone on as usual.

She still felt terrible, though, wracked with a morbid anticipation. The thought was always there, loping at the margins of her conscious mind, testing her already-fragile composure: _What if you’ve only delayed the inevitable? What if you’ve offended the Nightlanders with your audacity? What if they’re winding up to deliver an even more brutal blow? They’ll take your whole family, they will, and drag you away -_

“Chaeyoung!”

Chaeyoung jerked, her elbow sinking into someone’s stomach, and turned to the source of the sound. “Oh,” she muttered, heart pounding in her chest. “Hi, Yeri.”

Yeri grinned, turned around to glare back at the middle-aged guy who was glowering at them and rubbing his much-abused paunch, and nudged Chaeyoung in the side. “Why are you spacing out?” she asked. “Ooh, have you been seeing someone?”

“No,” Chaeyoung chuckled, attempting to laugh and failing. “No, I’m just… tired. Yeah.”

Yeri nodded wisely. “Hey, nightmares are nothing to be ashamed of. I get them all the time!”

“Right. Nightmares.”

Yeri rummaged around in her handbag as they walked out of the train carriage and brandished a small plastic bottle containing an array of pink tablets. “Try this,” she suggested, a glint in her eye.

Chaeyoung squinted at the label, which was completely illegible. While Yeri’s handbag was wonderful for bashing the weirdos who often tried to accost her when she was on her way home from work, its weight was mostly due to the pharmaceutical marvels contained therein. Yeri fancied herself an amateur pharmacist, since her parents dispensed medication at one of the city’s major hospitals, and this reputation of hers had served her well. Since she’d arrived at the Bureau of Processing five years ago, she’d been selling medication to many of her colleagues on the down-low, and Chaeyoung wouldn’t have been surprised if that trade netted her more money than her actual job.

“Um,” she managed, “I don’t think so. Doubt it’d help.”

“C’mon, you won’t know unless you try,” Yeri insisted, and stuffed the bottle back into her handbag as they passed under a security camera. “I’ll pass you the whole bottle free this evening, if you’re fine with that. How about it, eh? How about it?”

But Chaeyoung had already tuned her out.

This, she thought to herself, would be the moment of truth. If her keycard worked, then she’d go in as per normal, and her day would be fine, and her week would be fine, and everything would be fine. If it didn’t…

Well, there wasn’t much she could do.

Her mouth dry, she swiped her keycard across the reader… and could not resist a sigh of relief as it flicked green.

“What’s with that sigh?” Yeri asked, inquisitive and eagle-eyed as always, and Chaeyoung sighed, louder this time.

\-----

Although the River carted away hundreds of people to the Bloodlands on a regular basis, it also served as a reasonably reliable supplier of manpower to Seoul’s industries.

The things that came from the River came in two breeds: those that took, and those that did not.

Those that took were colloquially referred to as “Type One organisms”, and personnel from the Bureau of Processing were strongly advised to steer clear of them. Back when Chaeyoung had been but a lowly grunt, operating the rusty, bloodstained forklifts that were ubiquitous on the River’s banks, she’d never seen a single one. The closest she’d come to seeing them was when she’d piloted her forklift too far away from Collection Point Fifteen and narrowly avoided getting her throat skewered by something with too many eyes and too many limbs.

It seemed that Type One organisms tended to avoid Bureau personnel, and Chaeyoung, for her part, was perfectly happy with that state of affairs.

Type Two organisms, on the other hand, were the breeds that the Bureau concerned itself with, and they emerged from the River much more often than their larger and more anatomically diverse cousins. Most of them looked human, the key word in this case being _looked_. Dissections had been performed on more than a few deceased specimens, and the results had been… _interesting_.

All of them came inbuilt with at least one language, which was either Korean, Japanese or Chinese, languages that had taken their names from countries that no longer existed. And Chaeyoung’s job, then, was to orient them to their new reality, using a carefully-crafted spiel of words to impress upon them the contours of their situation and drive home the fact that this was their life now.

If Chaeyoung thought about it, it was a bit fucked up. They were children, essentially - from a developmental standpoint, practically infants - and yet they had the bodies of fully-grown adults. You had men the size of brick houses flailing around in a puddle of their own faeces, and women taller than Chaeyoung (or Yeri, for that matter) ramming their heads against the walls until restrained. It was… it was a mess. The sheer variety of misery…

Chaeyoung was almost relieved when Mr Park told her that she’d be on Overseer Duty at Collection Point Seven.

It was pretty obviously meant to be a punishment. She’d overstepped her bounds. She’d questioned his authority openly. What else was there to be said? This was the world she lived in. She’d just have to knuckle under.

So why was she so damn happy about it?

Eh. Variety, probably.

_This is some variety._

As an Overseer, Chaeyoung was positioned at the top of a rickety, rusty tower, made from all sorts of metals, always an inch away from total collapse. It held, though. In all the time that Chaeyoung had worked at the Bureau, no tower had never fallen. And they likely never would.

The tops of said towers contained nothing - no tables, no chairs, no ceiling - nothing save a single microphone, its wire trailing down, down, down to a vast array of speakers at the base of the towers. They were ringed by railings, of course, in the interests of paying lip service to the meagre health and safety regulations imposed by the government, but the towers had not been built with anything but cold utility in mind, and everyone knew it.

Chaeyoung huffed, hefted her binoculars in her hands, and arduously raised them to her eyes, fitting them through the specially-designed apertures in her suit to secure them in place. This high up, there wasn’t much need for any protective gear; the miasma blanketing the lower reaches of the River, though, could be lethal, and a full suit - thick, heavy and difficult to breathe in - was absolutely necessary for even basic survival. Type Twos could endure the toxins, though, and they were sturdier than most, which was why they were so useful as manual labour.

As an Overseer, then, Chaeyoung’s suit was much lighter and thinner than those of the grunts labouring down below, hauling bodies from the filmy, greasy muck that clung to the sides of the River. There were bubbles, here and there, great tumorous masses that swelled up from time to time and disgorged both Type One and Type Two organisms. Type Two organisms usually popped up near Collection Points, while Type One organisms popped up virtually anywhere else. Chaeyoung had always wondered why this was the case, but she had also learnt - quite early on in her job - that it didn’t do to ask stupid questions, since such questions often meant insinuating certain things about the nature of the government.

Chaeyoung’s eyes narrowed. Someone was doing something wrong. Bending down, she grasped the microphone in her hand, raised it to her mouth and called. “ _Oi!_ ” Her voice rolled out over the banks of the River, but the frenetic pace of activity did not stop. The shovels continued to pound, tearing wetly through the meaty sacs encasing the many Type Two organisms that rolled from the River. The forklifts continued to work, lifting Type Two organisms from the banks of the River and depositing them further back, where they would be cleaned up and briefed. Sometimes, fingers would break the surface of the River’s red waters. Sometimes, a Type Two organism would drag itself up from the depths and slither to a stop, panting, on the banks of the River.

Chaeyoung checked the schedule clutched in her right hand. “ _Team Thirteen-Omega,_ ” she called, “ _I’m not sure if you’re in a hurry or anything, but that’s an awful lot of sacs you’re harvesting. The organisms need to develop; they’ll end up malformed if you’re not careful._ ”

The supervisor in charge of that delegation dipped his (her?) head, chagrined, and Chaeyoung smiled, setting her microphone back in place. Shifting her weight onto her other foot, she yawned and seized the chance to glance up, away from everything else.

The towers rose higher even than the walls, which housed the offices and Sanitation Zones and Briefing Areas of the Bureau. They had been erected by Brownies - the things that lived across the water, in the land once known as Japan (according to her grandmother) - and bore, as a consequence, a certain casual disregard for human norms and needs. And yet… and yet… from here, she could see everything.

Well, not everything, but the towers were tall enough that she could see the tops of the tallest skyscrapers in the city without craning her neck. She could see the sun, huge and crimson, hanging low in the sky, and she could see the tiny streetlights below, outside the bounds of the walls shielding Seoul from the horrors of the River. (The streetlights were always on.) She could see the clouds that hung low, sometimes obscuring the highest floors of Samsung Tower, crackling with lightning, dispensing hair-raising gusts of wind that made Chaeyoung’s stomach drop. She could see -

_creak_

Chaeyoung glanced down, alarmed, and saw that there was a patch of mouldy black matter spreading across the railings in front of her. It hadn’t been there before, and was entirely unfamiliar because of that. She was used to rust, of course, but not to - not to _this_. Dumbfounded, she watched as it crept in every direction, snaking up the microphone, the wires that linked it to the speakers fraying and snapping, and -

The tower upon which she was perched pitched, sickeningly, with a loud, bone-deep _GROAN_ , reverberating in her bones, and Chaeyoung tilted with it. To be specific, she tilted forward, careening towards the mould-black railings, hands outstretched as if to block it, and the railings broke, and then -

And then Chaeyoung was falling.

No sooner had that fact registered than she was panicking, loudly, and very, very violently. She’d never screamed so loudly in a while; in fact, she wasn’t sure when she’d last screamed at all, but she was very sure that she was definitely going to die, and her last thoughts couldn’t be of her screaming, so she had to think of her family -

She wasn’t falling.

_She wasn’t falling._

Chaeyoung closed her mouth, opened her eyes, and turned to meet Case #492819’s eyes.

They were empty and as devoid of emotion as they had been the last time they’d met (which was just the day before), but Chaeyoung was already moving on, taking in the scenes of chaos that had erupted around her. All the teams had come to a stop simultaneously; most of them were staring at the tower. A snarl of the rapidly-spreading mould had engulfed it, and it was in the process of folding to the ground, collapsing in slow-motion as small outgrowths of corruption bloomed up and around its entire structure. Some of them were staring at her, and as their stares registered, Chaeyoung realized that Case #492819 was currently cradling her in her (very strong) arms.

“Please put me down,” said Chaeyoung, with as much dignity as she dared, struggling desperately to process the events of the past few seconds, and Case #492819 obliged. As she was lowered wordlessly to the ground, Chaeyoung realized that the taller woman was wearing a black dress, a far cry from the basic attire which she had been dressed in when Chaeyoung had come to brief her just yesterday.

Suddenly there was a shimmer, a twist in the air, a violent jerk that hurt Chaeyoung’s brain, and then the sky was filled with a blinding light. Chaeyoung had no chance to react, no chance to close her eyes. The brightness was such that she could feel her skin peeling at the heat, her eyeballs liquefying in their sockets, her flesh bubbling like candle wax -

And then, just as suddenly, the heat was gone.

Instead, there was a woman, slim and terrible, hovering in mid-air, dressed in the blank, creamy fabric of the Brightlands, and she was _glowing_.

**_FORGET_ **

The pulse reverberated out from the levitating woman with such vehemence, such violence and such force that the very concept blasted through Chaeyoung’s brain, compelling the memories of her fall, of her near-death, and of the impossible events of the past few minutes to dribble away, like water through a sieve. And yet… and yet…

As the light faded away and a sharp-chinned face emerged from the brilliance, Chaeyoung found that her memories remained. She was still in full control of her faculties. That could not be said, however, of her many colleagues, who stood, eyes glazed, swaying gently, as though in thrall -

There was a faint gurgling sound, and Chaeyoung spun around. Ms Park and Ms Myoui had appeared, their shoes untouched by the muck bubbling up from the banks of the River, and one of the Type Twos had dragged itself from the waters to grasp at Ms Park’s trousers. It was groaning one word, over and over, pawing ineffectually at the fabric, and Chaeyoung was so shell-shocked that it took a few moments for the meaning of the word to sink in.

The Type Two was speaking in Chinese. The word: “Mother.”

“Mother,” the Type Two gurgled, forcing the word out through malformed vocal chords, grasping at Ms Park’s pants, and Chaeyoung stared.

There was a crack of thunder, a peal of lightning, and Chaeyoung turned around again, only to see that another, unfamiliar woman had joined them, draped in a flowing blue gown. None of them - not these two women, not Ms Park, not Ms Myoui, and _certainly_ not Case #492819 - were wearing the protective gear that they _should_ have been wearing, this close to the River, and, come to think of it, Chaeyoung’s gear was hardly sufficient to protect from the toxins. Was she going to die?

“No,” sneered the levitating lady, still aloft in mid-air, and clearly not human. “No, you’re not going to die.” Her contempt was obvious; it was radiating off of her in waves. And yet… Chaeyoung hadn’t said a thing. Had the question been plucked from her mind?

Ms Myoui was striding past her, arms rising from her sleeves, and the rotted, corroded structure of the tower - a gnarly, thorned mess - straightened itself out with a horrible shriek. Jagged, right-angled flakes of metal were growing out of the wreckage, shearing off the mould, and the wretched fragments gathered in a small pile at the bottom as the tower grew back, rising higher and higher, and growing taller and straighter with every second.

“Don’t worry,” someone said, suddenly, and Chaeyoung turned to see the lady in blue, who was smiling at her with a vaguely bemused but friendly look on her face, exposing a pair of large front teeth. “I just dropped by to see what was going on.”

Chaeyoung smiled back, because what the hell? Why not? Her life clearly didn’t make sense anymore, so why not smile back at a nice lady who’d appeared from nowhere?

A knife dove into her brain, then, and Chaeyoung bent double, a scream building in her throat as the lady in yellow advanced on her, her feet still hovering above the ground, a vacant, brilliant smile spreading across her face -

And, just as suddenly, it stopped. Chaeyoung’s scream died in her throat as the agony - which had seemed all-encompassing just a moment before - disappeared like dew in the early morning, and she straightened up just in time to catch Case #492819 shoot what could have been a disapproving glare at the lady in yellow, who seemed disappointed.

“Do you know why this happened to you?”

This was from Ms Park, who seemed to have shaken off the Type Two. She was bearing down on Chaeyoung now, her brows creased, and Chaeyoung was only too eager to reply, if only to avoid another round of torture courtesy of the lady in yellow. “No,” she babbled, shaking her head, “I don’t - I don’t know. It just -” She gestured at the tower, which now stood even taller. “It just appeared out of nowhere. I don’t know -”

Ms Park looked over Chaeyoung’s shoulder, at Case #492819, and an unspoken conversation seemed to take place between the two of them.

As they spoke (if they were, indeed, speaking), Chaeyoung looked around, at her colleagues. They seemed to have gone catatonic, although they were still standing upright. Even the Type Twos who had been harvested from the River had fallen silent. Was it due to Ms Park’s presence? She was from the Bloodlands, after all, so -

“Not _from_ the Bloodlands,” said the lady in yellow, another vacant smile flickering over her face, and Chaeyoung - in lieu of a reply - inched away from her.

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” she asked, instead, plaintively.

There followed another tense moment of silent conversation.

Ms Myoui sighed, and Chaeyoung blinked.

In the space between one moment and the next, the other four women had vanished. It was just her… her, and Ms Myoui.

They weren’t even by the River.

Instead, as Chaeyoung took in her surroundings, it quickly became apparent that they were standing atop a skyscraper.

The skyline didn’t seem familiar, though, and as Chaeyoung continued to look around, she realized that there were skyscrapers as far as the eye could see. There were many of them, all roughly the same shape, and all with the same abstract patterns of glass and metal, sketching out the vague impression of windows, and as she bent a little, peering over the edge, it became clear that the gaps between the skyscrapers were yawning chasms, disappearing into mist.

Chaeyoung swallowed, turned around, and noticed that there seemed to be a wall behind her. But… that couldn’t be. Wasn’t it -

The wall continued in both directions, until it vanished into the same mist that seemed to accumulate in the far distance, and Chaeyoung followed it as it rose up, higher and higher and higher, until she could just barely make out the outline of a soaring ceiling.

There was no sun. The sky was the exact same colour as the wall.

“Are you done looking?”

Chaeyoung spun around, on the very verge of being completely overwhelmed, and saw that Ms Myoui had sat down on a plastic chair that hadn’t been there before. There was another plastic chair directly opposite her, and it was this chair that Chaeyoung was sitting in.

But she hadn’t been sitting; she’d been standing up -

“Don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to,” Ms Myoui said, softly.

\-----

founder of cottagecore @ETFoneHome | 6m 

there’s something outside my house

[VID]

aaron @aar_potts | 6m 

WHY THE FUCK DOES IT HAVE ANTLERS. WHY THE FUCK.

Roger Blake @rogeBBB | 5m

Hey dude, this isn’t funny. Please respond to our phone calls.

STAN LOONA @hyewonica | 5m 

help?? the thames turned to chocolate??

[VID]

orang @utank1999 | 4m

world’s gone mad

pete stank @ptank__ | 3m

hey can everyone else stop taking the piss out of this girl. im corroborating it rn. DEADASS. there is a METRIC FUCKTON of sugar accumulating in the thames. i work at imperial college and i just ran tests on the liquid. IT IS CHOCOLATE. [IMG]

Bloomberg @business | 3m 

someone please help. i am an intern. the floor is melting. my boss is melting. please help. please help. please help

ROSE COMICS @rose_indie | 2m 

GET OUT OF NEW YORK. IT’S NOT SAFE. GET OUT OF NEW YORK.

duke of aberdeen @duke_skd | 2m

I’m pretty sure I’m going crazy, because I just saw a giant snake crawl past my window. I live in the Outback, and we see a lot of crazy shit, but this kinda blows everything else I’ve experienced out of the water. 1/n

Sweden.se @swedense | 1m 

Sweden hereby declares total and unswerving allegiance to Odin Allfather, Father of the Slain. We invite all faithful warriors to join us in swearing allegiance to Odin Allfather and to bear witness as we offer up…

Sweden.se @swedense | 0m 

… the pretender Carl Bernadotte and his offspring to the Allfather tomorrow. Their lives are forfeit. Hail Odin!

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